NATION
America today is a
save-yourself society if there ever was one. But does it really work? The
underdeveloped societies suffer from one set of diseases: tuberculosis, malnutrition,
pneumonia, parasites, typhoid, cholera, typhus, etc. Affluent America has
virtually invented a whole new set of diseases: obesity, arteriosclerosis,
heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, venereal disease, cirrhosis of the liver,
drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce, battered children, suicide, murder. Take
your choice. Laborsaving machines have turned out to be body-killing devices.
Our affluence has allowed both mobility and isolation of the nuclear family,
and as a result our divorce courts, our prisons and our mental institutions are
flooded. In saving ourselves we have nearly lost ourselves.
Reconstruction to a Wartime, not a Peacetime, Lifestyle,
Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, William Carey Library, 1981, p.
815.
America’s greatness has been the greatness of a free people who
shared certain moral commitments.
Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly
self-destructive.
John W. Gardner
You don’t have to go to heathen
lands today to find false gods. America
is full of them. Whatever you love more
than God is your idol.
D.L. Moody
According to Edward Gibbon,
in his classic work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, there
were five major causes for the decline and fall of the Roman empire. 1.
The breakdown of the family and the increase of divorce. 2.
The spiraling rise of taxes and extravagant spending. 3.
The mounting desire for pleasure and the brutalization of sports. 4.
The continual production of armaments to face ever increasing threats of
enemy attacks. 5. The decay of religion into many confusing
forms, leaving the people without a uniform faith. It is very significant that these factors exist today.
George Sweeting
Who Said That? Moody Press, 1995, p. 143.
It is a fact that unless
children are brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, they, and
the society which they constitute or control, will go to destruction. Consequently, when a state resolves that religious
instruction shall be banished from the schools and other literary institutions,
it virtually resolves on self-destruction.
Charles Hodge
As God can protect His
people under the greatest despotism, so the utmost civil liberty is no safety to
them without the immediate protection of His Almighty arm. I fear that
Christians in this country have too great a confidence in political
institutions…(rather) than of the government of God.
Alexander Carson
Confidence in God in Times of Danger, p. 41.
Despite its foundational
Christian heritage, America is rapidly degenerating into a godless
society. The church in America,
although highly visible and active, appears powerless to redirect the rushing
secular currents. Mired in a moral and
spiritual crisis, America’s only hope is a national revival, like God has
graciously bestowed in the past.
Erwin Lutzer
America’s Spiritual Crisis, Revival Commentary, v. 1, n. 2,
p. 12.
We must repudiate our
confused loyalties and concerns for the passing world and put aside our
misguided efforts to change culture externally. To allow our thoughts, plans, time, money, and energy to be spent
trying to make a superficially Christian America, or to put a veneer of
morality over the world, is to distort the gospel, misconstrue our divine
calling, and squander our God-given resources.
We must not weaken our spiritual mission, obscure our priority of
proclaiming the gospel of salvation, or become confused about our spiritual citizenship,
loyalties and obligations. We are to
change society, but by faithfully proclaiming the gospel, which changes lives
on the inside.
John MacArthur
Titus, Moody, 1996, p. 138.
It cannot be emphasized too
strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists,
but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths
have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship.
Patrick Henry
The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall
be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be
what God made him, without hindrance.
Henry Ward Beecher